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Students, parents, and teachers across New York City are preparing for a challenging new academic year as the public school system embarks on its third major reorganization in five years.

The new structure puts schools at the center of decision-making and creates both opportunities and challenges. Experience tells us it will likely take some time for schools to adjust to the changes. But New York City’s 100,000 public school educators stand ready to roll up our sleeves and work with principals, parents, and students to achieve academic success. Regardless of what the bureaucratic structure is, we know that true partnership is the key to making our schools work for kids.

Is more education the answer, I wonder, as I scroll through the job postings on Craigslist on my super fancy iPhone, a ‘congrats college graduate!’ gift from my parents. I’m reading ad after ad, each sounding like the hand of God reaching down to save me from the dismal abyss that has become my life, but alas, I’m always just a letter or two shy of being the perfect candidate. So I ask myself, should I dig my debt hole even deeper?

Do I really need another set of initials that supposedly decides my worth? BA, MA, JD, Ph.D.?. OMG, will those letters rearrange to spell fulfilling, high paying job with flexible hours and great benefits? Who knows!

All I know is the first degree didn’t spell anything worthwhile, it amounted to something that sounded like ‘nope, try again’ and it landed me right back where I started, in the pink-walled room that I grew up in. Man did life throw me for a loop!

In 2009, I was probably a lot like you. I owned my first small business (I was a painting contractor) and I worked my butt off, yet… when it came to getting new customers, I was pretty clueless. I quickly came to the painful realization that the skills that allowed me to be successful as a painter, were absolutely useless when it came to attracting qualified prospects.

Back then, I didn’t understand that “marketing” and performing the technical aspect of what you do for a living, are two mutually exclusive skill sets. But over time, I discovered that one without the other–renders your business virtually useless, and it grinds any progress you might otherwise be making, along with your cash—flow—to—a–screeching –halt.

But let’s face it, getting qualified leads is a challenge for most entrepreneurs. However, I simply couldn’t understand why every single ad I ran…and every single postcard and mailer I sent out…never worked.

Without a doubt, the one element in that separates the truly successful from everyone else is their habits! Ask yourself a question… does everything I do in any given day create positive results? More importantly, if you break down all the activities in a day, what do those activities result in?

I want to introduce you to a system that will help you rate your daily activities and see if your habits are helping or hurting you! This is a formula that the select few, top earners have mastered and you need to learn.

Completely Useless Activities. These are daily activities that not only earn you $0, they will actually cost you money. Entrepreneurs in any industry, not just Internet and Network Marketing, absolutely can’t afford to spend any time here.

These would involve: constant email activity, needlessly worrying about things that are simply out of your control, spending useless time in social media (Facebook, Twitter, blogs, Youtube…), and my favorite – ANY TV!

Why change? When I hear people talk about a change in their lives, it always strikes me how different people think about themselves.

The two extremes are easy to notice. On the one hand, I meet people close to being perfect, but relentlessly striving to further improve themselves. On the other hand, I come across people who think they are perfect, but … you know what I mean 😉 .

I think it’s not necessary to change, if you genuinely are happy with every aspect of yourself. Read that sentence again.

What I just said is critical, because most people are not happy with who they are or with the way they live their lives. If you are unhappy with a certain aspect of your life, then you have two options, accept it or change it.

Accept

Although it seems like the easiest option, accepting yourself is easier said than done, believe me. What’s more, one day you seemingly live in peace and harmony, whereas other days you’re so mad at yourself for being like this or that, and you cannot stand yourself. I think you know what I’m talking about.

Looking to get your career going, but don’t know where to start? There’s a ton of information out there. Some of it’s good, and some of it… not so much. Since I decided to change my career, I’ve hit just about every roadblock out there.

Now that I know they’re there, there’s no reason that you should have to run into the same problems. First of all, make sure that you are qualified. If not, go back to school and get credentials you need. But the idea of going back to school was terrifying at first.

Many people have plenty of opportunities, free schools, yet they never got their HS or GED diploma. I know something about it, I was there myself. First, you try every resource that offers free prep. But these paid classes are expensive especially if you have no job so you end up looking for excuses. Fortunately, with internet on your phone, you can easily find free online courses like the one BestGEDClasses offers to get all set for tests like the CLEP (College Level Examination Program) or the GED (General Education Development) Test.

But back to what we were talking about, and it’s right. I hate social intervention. I break out into cold sweats just thinking about all of those people, and all of those possible interactions.

In 1996, California enacted a Class Size Reduction (CSR) program. This incentive program gave schools a special monetary allocation from the state budget to maintain K-3 class sizes to 20 or fewer students.

Classes also had to be conducted as separate groups acting as an independent class, meaning, you couldn’t have a whole class of 30 with 20 students separated out for some period of time during the school day.

A few years later, some classes for 9th graders were added to the CSR program. Now, more than two decades and multi-billions of dollars later, California is broke and according to the California Department of Education, nowadays few schools are able to participate in CSR due to serious local school district budgetary crises.

The average class sizes in California during the 2015-16 school year were as such and continue to climb given the state of the economy. While small class size is wildly popular among teachers and parents, perhaps rightfully so, I’ve always gone back and forth about how much I believe class size matters with regard to student learning.

Recently, Helle Heckmann and Louise DeForest, two experienced educators in Waldorf were in our town for one week. They are traveling through America to check on the Waldorf initiatives.

Helle Heckmann directs a kindergarten in Copenhagen called Noken, also the title of a book she wrote. Talking about her experiences could make a whole post, but you can read here more about her impressions on educating children.

They had a workshop for teachers and I asked to participate.

The most important message I got from that meeting with those ladies, is the importance of the inner work while working-living with children. Our influence on our kids is much more about ourselves than about what we want them to do or learn. They learn what we give as ourselves.

Lately, I’ve been forgetting to take my medicines – Zoloft and THE PILL – before bed. It shouldn’t be so easy to forget them. They are right there in the medicine cabinet, next to my contacts, staring at me as I plunge myself into blindness in a nightly ritual.

It should be pretty simple. Take out my contacts, put the case in the cabinet, and grab the prescriptions from the shelf. But it’s not. I keep forgetting.

There are some obvious downsides to this forgetfulness. For one thing, I’m (close but) not quite ready to start on Bebe le Deuxieme. Did you hear that, Subconscious? I’m not quite ready yet. Give me a few more months, and then we’ll talk.

Side note: I even called to schedule my annual girly parts check-up, and they couldn’t fit me in until late August. Ain’t nothing happening in the uterus till after that appointment!

The other day while I was focused on pulling the perfect shot of coffee for a pre-teen who didn’t even look old enough to be drinking a triple vente mocha with whip, I toyed with the idea of having a drinking age for coffee like they have for alcohol, like 18 maybe? Although to be fair I indulged in my share of caramel frappacinos in my teen years, ironically at this very Starbucks.

I remembered feeling so hip sitting in the cozy overstuffed chair in the corner with my BFF as we gossiped and laughed and then snuck outside to smoke Kool menthol cigarettes. So who am I to deny an almost young adult of such a benchmark life experience! Scratch that, no legal drinking age for coffee, but shhhh! don’t tell but I’m not giving this 12-year-old three shots, she won’t even know the difference, in fact I’m doing her a favor.

“That’ll be $3.89 please.”

“Um, okay,” she says as she swings her Coach clutch onto the counter and counts out four dollar bills with French tip manicured nails. More Link